YCAR is pleased to announce the recipients of Research Collaboration Fellowships for the 2024–25 academic year.
Ghazala Shahabuddin (Environmental Studies, Ashoka University, India) and Shubhra Gururani (Anthropology) received a fellowship for their project, ‘Re-wilding’ the Urban Periphery: An interdisciplinary study of the changing politics of nature in India’a National Capital Region (NCR).
Recognizing the urgency to respond to the deleterious impact of urbanization of regional
ecologies on the neighbouring cities of Gurgaon and Faridabad located in the southern edge of New Delhi, Gururani and Shahabuddin bring their long-term research experience in the area to evaluate the political ecology of rewilding projects in Delhi NCR.
“Through this collaboration, we aim to launch an interdisciplinary conversation that brings together an ecologist and an anthropologist to evaluate the limits and possibilities of rewilding initiatives in India’s urbanizing peripheries,” said Gururani.
Professor Shahabuddin will visit Toronto in Spring 2025 for two months.
Gururani has been conducting ethnographic research on urbanization in the city of Gurgaon since 2008. She has published widely on the subject and also conducted preliminary research on the Aravalli Biodiversity Park, which began as a restoration of mining quarries in Gurugram. She holds a SSHRC Insight Grant (2022–26), Life and Death of Urban Nature in India, which focuses on the changing political ecologies of Gurgaon.
Shahabuddin is a well-known conservation biologist who has been tracking the loss of biodiversity in mountain ecologies of the Himalayas and the Aravallis in the peripheries of New Delhi over the past two decades. She has recently studied a rewilding project based on cheetah reintroduction. Gururani and Shahabuddin, coming from their disciplinary vantage points of conservation biology and social anthropology, will collaborate during the period of the research fellowship and initiate a much-needed dialogue to develop a multipronged response to the ecological crisis facing urban area in the global South.
Thomas Klassen (School of Public Policy and Administration) and collaborator Sophia Seung-Yoon Lee (Department of Social Welfare, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, South Korea) are working on a project on Platform Workers' Working Conditions and Social Protection. Dr Lee plans to spend two months in Toronto in Summer 2025.
The objective of their research is to conduct a comparative study on the working conditions and social protection regulations for platform workers in South Korea and Canada. The focus in Canada is the Greater Toronto region. In the context of rapid technological advancements, capitalism has transitioned into what is known as digital capitalism,
significantly altering traditional labour markets. The proliferation of platform economies, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has led to the dismantling of traditional employment relationships, making way for various forms of precarious work.
“Previous studies on precarious work have predominantly analyzed the uncertainty and instability associated with the dissolution of traditional employment contracts, concentrating on the groups most affected by these changes. However, these studies have often fallen short of capturing the dynamic and non-standard nature of work observed in the new economy, including changes in work environments,” said Klassen. “If legislative reforms reflecting these changes are delayed, we risk facing a future where instability becomes the norm. Therefore, it is crucial to analyze and address the relationship between changing work forms, work environments, and instability. This research aims to provide concrete and practical legislative directions for restructuring social protection systems to match the new labor market realities.”
Lee is an expert in labour market sociology, social policy, and comparative welfare state studies. She has extensive experience in researching precarious work and social protection, with several published works in high-impact journals. In the past she has collaborated with researchers in several nations. The duo have collaborated on an edited book on labour policy in Asia), Lee has visited York in the past, and Klassen annually brings his York University summer study abroad students to Lee’s Korean social welfare policy. Their ongoing relationship helps ensure the success of the research project.
The YCAR Research Collaboration Fellowship (RCF) is aimed to promote intensive collaboration between a Faculty Associate of the Centre and a research collaborator at another research institution or organization. The fellowship provides support for a collaborator, usually from Asia, to visit Toronto for the specific purpose of jointly working on a research proposal, project or publication. Preference may be given to applicants with existing collaborations at the time of application.
This opportunity is adjudicated by YCAR’s Awards Committee.
The next deadline for applications for the 2025–26 academic year is Friday, 16 May 2025.